


A Proper Christmas

by simeysgirl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-12
Updated: 2011-10-12
Packaged: 2017-10-24 13:19:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simeysgirl/pseuds/simeysgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Christmas time at Hogwarts and only two students have stayed for the holidays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Proper Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Beta: wendypops  
> Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JKR, not me

It was the week before Christmas and the halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizadry were eerily quiet. The Hogwarts Express had just pulled away from a snow covered Hogsmeade station, carrying all but two of the students home for the holiday. It was the first Christmas after the war had ended and families were desperate to spend the festive season together.

The remaining two were presently at separate ends of the castle; sitting in their respective common rooms, enjoying the peace.

 

Harry Potter was sitting in the highly coveted most comfortable chair near the fire in Gryffindor House. He had a notepad on his lap and he was sucking on the end of the muggle pen in his hand.

Harry’s Wishlist

  

  * ·         A new broom
  

  * ·         An owl
  

  * ·         Some Chocolate Frogs
  



He chewed on the pen some more as he contemplated the rest of his list. Harry wasn’t stupid; he  _knew_  that Santa wasn’t real. This was just for him; he wanted these things but didn’t expect anybody to buy them for him. They would, of course. If he only happened to mention in passing that he needed anything, even some new pants, word would get around and he would soon be inundated with parcels of boxer shorts, novelty y-fronts and even some thongs. Yes, he wouldn’t be making  _that_ mistake again. Ron didn’t stop laughing for days.

  

  * ·         Someone to talk to who  _didn’t_  fawn over him.
  



He added to the list. He had even caught his supposed friends staring at him with a faraway look in their eyes. They  _knew_  him; they  _knew_  he wasn’t anything special.

  

  * ·         Someone special.
  

  * ·         Who isn’t Ginny.
  

  * ·         Ginny to get a clue.
  



He had talked to his ex-girlfriend many times over the course of the term; he had tried to explain that he just didn’t feel that way about her any more. She either didn’t listen or had chosen to completely ignore his feelings on the matter. She hung around him wherever he happened to be: the Great Hall at dinner, the common room, the quidditch pitch. He had even had to forcibly remove from his dormitory more than once. Ron had just rolled his eyes at her actions and continued in his quest to get Hermione to move past the kissing stage.

This was the reason for him staying at Hogwarts instead of accepting the offer of Christmas at the Burrow. He needed some peace away from adult responsibilities, one last time to just be ‘Harry’.

  

  * ·         A proper Christmas. Like I should have had before.
  



Harry stood up suddenly, notepad and pen falling to the floor. Now this one he could do something about on his own. He ran up the stairs to his dormitory so quick he nearly stumbled. He reappeared five minutes later with a single sock, his outdoor cloak, an old T shirt of Uncle Vernon’s, one of Hermione’s elf hats and his gloves. 

Harry dropped everything but the sock onto the chair and took out his wand. With a quick swish and a jab of his wand, Harry held in his hand a bright red stocking with a green trim and a big letter H on the front. He smiled as he hung his stocking on the fireplace. Donning his outerwear, he climbed through the portrait hole without a backward glance.

After a leisurely walk through the empty corridors, Harry found himself out in the grounds. He stomped through the thick snow until he found the perfect spot. He looked around to see if anyone was watching and dropped to the floor.

Laughing like a child, he moved his arms and legs in harmony. He had never been allowed to this as an actual child; it was Dudley’s snow to play with, untouched by freaks. Even when he reached Hogwarts at eleven, it was deemed a childish thing to do by his peers so he abstained. Harry jumped up and giggled once more at the sight of the large snow angel imprinted in the ground.

Buoyant, Harry moved to a fresh patch of snow and started to pile snow up to make a snowman. His gloves were soon soaked through but Harry didn’t notice; he was in his element! It was lopsided and a bit shorter than he wanted but he loved it all the same.

He took the misshapen hat out of his pocket and unravelled the spotty scarf from around his neck. Once he had placed these items on his snowman he scoured the ground looking for twigs for arms and rocks for his eyes. Harry found a candy cane in his robe and used the sweet for a rather awkward looking nose. He dressed his snowman in the old T shirt and cast a charm on his creation to prevent it from melting too soon.

When he had finished, he stood back to admire his handiwork; he was impressed. Not bad for a first-timer!

Cold but perfectly content, he didn’t seem to notice the only other boy in the castle watching him from an upstairs window as he walked back to the castle.

Shaking the snow from his robe once he reached the common room, Harry picked up his wishlist from the table to check off his last item. He paused for a second to try to remember picking it up off the floor earlier, but decided that he must have done it; maybe he had been in too much of a hurry and did it subconsciously.

 

Harry walked down to the Great Hall to see if dinner had been served. With all the mucking about in the snow, he had completely forgotten about lunch and was quite hungry. Upon entering the Hall, he noticed Malfoy sitting on his own, reading a potions textbook at the Slytherin table. Harry rolled his eyes when his simple look garnered a small sneer in return.

 

The next morning, after an uneventful and lonely breakfast, Harry ventured out into the grounds again. He told himself he was going for a walk but he knew deep down that he just wanted to see if his snowman was still there.

The snowman  _was_ there, but he was now wearing a black robe and had a carrot for its nose, instead of the strange looking candy cane. Harry walked closer to inspect it. The robe was a school robe, with a Gryffindor crest on it.  _Bizarre,_ he thought, looking around to see if he could spot the person messing with  _his_  snowman.

He left the robe as it was though; it did look a lot better than that ratty old T shirt, so he couldn’t complain.

The grey eyes were watching him, unnoticed, once again.

Draco didn’t go unnoticed in the Great Hall at lunchtime; it would’ve been hard as he was the only student there until a pink cheeked Harry Potter strolled in. To Harry’s immense surprise, he received a nod in return for his look today. He nodded back and settled down for some lunch.

Harry did start to wonder why Malfoy had stayed for the holidays. He didn’t understand why Draco would want to stay here instead of going home to be with his mother. Harry did vaguely recall Andromeda mentioning something about visiting her sister but he obviously wasn’t paying much attention, as for the life of him he couldn’t remember the details. It was another reason he was staying at Hogwarts; he wanted to spend it with Teddy, but he refused point blank to attend Malfoy Manor.

 

When Harry returned later, he was taken aback once again; the knitted hat was replaced by a shocking head of what looked like actual hair. Messy black hair, to be more precise. Harry burst out laughing; it very much looked like his own untameable mop. Originally, he had thought that maybe it had been Professor McGonagall and that she was showing some house pride, but now he wasn’t so sure.

After spending some more time playing about in the snow and some laps of the quidditch pitch on an old school broom, Harry went inside in search of some dinner. He was surprised to see only the teachers there; no sign of Malfoy at his table at all. Confused, he helped himself to mashed potatoes and started to eat. When the doors opened a couple of minutes later, Harry looked up to see Malfoy, a small smile gracing his face. If Harry had expected the smile to vanish at the sight of him, he was mistaken. Draco shared his smile with Harry across the Hall and sat down to eat.

Harry automatically smiled back before he realised what he was doing.

 _Smiling at Malfoy? Stop! Why? Why would I do that? Why did it make me feel happy? Well if it makes me feel happy, why not,_ he thought. Of course, once he was finished with his inner turmoil, the moment was over and Malfoy was happily eating his dinner.

The next morning, Harry couldn’t wait to see if his snowman still had the messy black hair! He didn’t go to breakfast; he simply dressed, washed and ran out of the door. He wanted to see if anything else had changed for the better.

It had. Instead of the plain black rocks Harry had used for eyes, beautiful green emeralds were now glittering on the snowman’s face. “Wow,” Harry said aloud; he was gobsmacked at the work it must have taken Draco to transfigure the rocks.

As he walked into the Great Hall, he caught Draco’s eye and shot him a massive grin. He received an even bigger one in reply before they both turned away and started to dish themselves up some food.

After lunch, Harry ran upstairs to grab his gloves before he ventured out again; he had almost frozen in his desperation to get out this morning!

When he made it outside, he realised he was already too late to catch Draco in the act. He had to suppress more giggles when he noticed the final change. A pair of huge, round framed glasses was resting atop the carrot nose, sun glinting off the lenses. It took him a second to realise that that wasn’t the only thing. When he walked closer, he noticed the faintest hint of a lightning bolt impression, drawn on with a fingertip.

Harry felt a shiver run down his back when he realised that there was someone watching him. He turned slowly and came face to face with the spectator.

“Do you like it?” Draco spoke his first words to Harry all week.

He laughed and nodded. “You need one too!”

Harry waved his wand and to Draco’s surprise, a taller, smarter snowman rose up out of the snow.

“If you could do that, why did you do it by hand the other day?” Draco asked confused.

“It was more fun,” was Harry’s simple reply as he unwound Draco’s scarf from around his neck.

After placing this around the snowman’s neck, Harry raised his wand.

 _“Accio!”_

He swished his wand and another misshapen hat, oversized T shirt and a candy cane flew towards them from a window in the tower.

Harry dressed the snowman and turned to Draco.

“Your turn,” he said, bowing slightly.

Draco grinned and took out his wand. A few well placed spells later, and his snowman had a tidy head of blond hair, a Slytherin cloak and stunning grey eyes.

Harry and Draco stood back to look over their masterpieces. Glancing at each other, they smiled and moved to the nearby bench to sit down.

 

And they talked. They talked about silly things like quidditch and Christmas; as well as more important subjects such as school and their homelives. The only thing they refused to talk about was the war. Harry decided that the past was past, and it seemed as if Draco thought the same way too. They talked all afternoon and well into dinner time. No-one had come to search for them so they simply carried on talking.

 

A little while later, Draco’s stomach grumbled, causing them to laugh and make their way back to the castle. Harry showed Draco how to gain entrance to the kitchens so they could grab a late snack. Draco simply rolled his eyes and followed his companion through the doorway.

 

Over their food in the cavernous kitchen, they continued to talk. They talked about their hopes and fears for the future and what they would like to be after they had finished their education.

Harry found spending time with Draco, without the sneering or fighting, to be extremely pleasant. He found it refreshing to be with someone who didn’t act like he was the second coming of Merlin; who respected and was thankful for what he had done, yet realised that he was not special.

 _Another one to mark of my list,_ he thought.

As they said their goodnights at the end of the evening, Harry smiled and turned to go back to the tower.

“Potter, wait!” Draco called out.

“Harry,” the other boy replied, “I think we’re friends now, so please call me Harry.”

“Okay, call me Draco.” He nodded and moved to go down to the dungeons.

“Wait, what did you want?” Harry asked.

Draco smiled. “Don’t worry, Harry; it’s already been answered.”

 

The next few days started the same. Harry and Draco would meet in the Great Hall for breakfast and then spend the day talking, playing quidditch and just enjoying each other’s company. They had discovered that they had a lot of hobbies, worries and hopes in common so they had plenty to talk about.

 

On Christmas Eve, Harry had wished Draco goodnight and Merry Christmas and retired to his common room. He had wrapped the snitch he had bought for Draco as a last minute present and placed his wishlist on the side table along with some milk and cookies.

 _Tradition_  he had told himself while he was preparing them.

He made sure his stocking was hanging straight on the fireplace and made his way to bed.

Harry woke up leisurely on Christmas morning; thankful that Ron wasn’t there to jump on his bed. He made his way downstairs and nearly fell down the last couple of steps in shock at the sight that greeted him. Under the tree, he could see the lumpy parcel he had expected from Mrs Weasley, a badly wrapped present that he assumed was from Ron and a rectangular, perfectly neat present that was obviously his book from Hermione. There were a few other presents, probably from his other friends.

 

No, the thing that shocked him was the fireplace. His stocking was overflowing with blue packets; there must have been twenty Chocolate Frogs stuffed inside the transfigured sock! That may have been enough, but for the magnificent tawny owl sat on the back of the armchair, holding a very broom shaped object in its talons.

He slowly approached the owl to read the tag on the present.

 _Merry Christmas Harry!_ was all it said. No name, nothing else. The same words were on a note loosely tied around the neck of the owl.

Harry sat down hard in shock. That was when he noticed that the milk and cookies had gone, too.

He wasn’t stupid; he knew Santa wasn’t real. Wasn’t he? Was he?  _Santa was real!_

Harry just smiled and unwrapped his presents. He could deal with the details later, gifts first!

Harry thoroughly enjoyed his Christmas Day. Draco was pleased with his snitch, and simply laughed as he handed Harry his present; Draco had bought him a snitch, too! They played games all morning and lunched with the professors at a small table set up beautifully at the front of the Hall. Professor McGonagall sent them both beaming smiles after they pulled their crackers and had both fallen to the ground laughing, covered in confetti.

The week after Christmas flew by in a haze of snowball fights, quidditch and more talking. Before they knew it, they were waiting in the Great Hall for the rest of the school to return from their break.

A shiver ran down Harry’s spine as he noticed a small redheaded girl running towards him, eyes blazing. Before he could think what to do, he found hands grasping him around the neck and pulling him in for a heated kiss.

“Draco?” Harry stuttered when the blond let go of him. “What was that?” he added in a dreamy voice.

“I was giving Ginny a clue.” Draco simply replied, leaning in to kiss Harry again.

Harry’s eyes lit up in recognition. He didn’t notice the stares and whispers as he met Draco’s lips for the second time.

“Thank you,” he whispered gently into Draco’s ear.


End file.
